UMS Concert Program, Friday, Apr. 12 To 21: University Musical Society: 2002 Winter - Friday, Apr. 12 To 21 --

Season: 2002 Winter
The University Of Michigan

University Musical Society
of the University of Michigan 2002 Winter Season
Event Program Book Friday, April 12 through Sunday, April 21, 2002
General Information
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Les Musiciens du Louvre
Friday, April 12, 8:00pm Hill Auditorium
Takacs Quartet and 15
Robert Pinsky
All the World for Love
Saturday, April 13, 8:00pm Lydia Mendelssohn Theatre
Ian Bostridge 23
Sunday, April 14, 4:00pm Lydia Mendelssohn Theatre
Lyon Opera Ballet 29
Cendrillon
Friday, April 19,8:00pm Saturday, April 20, 8:00pm Sunday, April 21, 3:00pm Power Center
Dear UMS Patrons,
Welcome to this performance brought to you by UMS. It is hard to believe that this program book represents the last installment of the season. I hope that you have enjoyed the 20012002 series as much as I have.
Some thoughts at the end of the season:
It seems fitting that I introduce you to the UMS Production staff which has physically planned and produced every performance you have attended this season. Production Administrative Director Emily Avers keeps the multi?ple and often simultaneous schedules and budgets organized; Technical Director Andy Hause makes sure that every lighting instrument, sound speaker, video projector and piano key is in proper working order; Artist
Services Coordinator Sue Hamilton cares for every artist and ensemble that graces our stage while maintaining UMS' legendary reputation for Ann Arbor hospitality; and Front-of-House coordinators Jeffrey Golde and Christine Field make sure that when you arrive at a UMS event, your experience is friendly and trouble-free. Of course, they couldn't do their jobs without our superb stagehands of IATSE Local 395 and our tireless volunteer usher corps. Thank you all for a magnificent season of performances!
I can't help but think about how lucky we all are to enjoy the beauty and mystery of music, theater and dance at a time when so much of the world is in turmoil. Our season began on Wednesday, September 12 with a series of cancellations. While it got off to a rocky start, listening to artists from Berlin, Sydney, Kampala, Moscow, Salzburg, Seoul, Amsterdam, Warsaw, St. Petersburg, Paris, Detroit, Minneapolis, and Havana has reaffirmed my belief in the power
From left: Andy Hause, Sue Hamilton, Christine Field, Jeffrey Golde, and Emily Avers.
of live performance to nourish the soul and sustain community. I feel very lucky to be involved with UMS and our incredibly supportive audience members.
Thank you for coming to this event. I would like to know your thoughts about this performance and this season, in general. What did you like What didn't meet your expectations Drop me an e-mail at mkond@umich.edu.
@@@@Happy Spring!
Michael J. Kondziolka Director of Programming
UMS Educational
through Sunday, April 21,2002
All UMS educational activities are free and open to the public unless otherwise noted ($). Please visit www.ums.org for complete details and updates.
Takacs Quartet and Robert Pinsky
Study Club 5:
All the World for Love
For registration informa?tion, please contact Dichondra Johnson at 734.615.6712. Tuesday, April 5, 7:00p.m. Michigan League, Vandenberg Room, 2nd Floor.
Meet the Artists
with members of the Takacs
Quartet and Robert Pinksy.
Saturday, April 13,
post-performance.
Lydia Mendelssohn Theatre.
Lyon Opera Ballet
PREP
"The Familiar Made
Strange: Maguy Marin's
Cinderella' led by Kate
Remen-Wait.
Friday, April 19, 7:00p.m.
Michigan League,
Vandenberg Room, 2nd Floor.
UMS
and
KeyBank
present
Les Musiciens du Louvre
Marc Minkowski, Conductor
Anne Sofie von Otter,Mezzo-soprano
Tonight's program order has been slightly adjusted from the printed program listed
in your program book. Please note the revised program order and intermission placement
in the program listed below.
Johann Sebastian Bach
George Frideric Handel
Cantata: Ich habe genug, BWV 82a
Aria: Ich habe genug
Recitativo: Ich habe genug! Mein Trost
Aria: Schlummert ein, ihr matten Augen
Recitativo: Mein Gott! Wenn kommt das schone
Aria: Ich freue mich auf meinem Tod
Ms. von Otter
Patrick Beaugiraud, Oboe
Concerto Grosso in G Major, Op. 6, No. 1
A tempo giusto
Allegro
Adagio
Allegro
Allegro (Menuet)
@@@@Handel
Hercules (Musical Drama in Three Acts) (excerpt) Aria: Resign thy club (Act II)
Ariodante (Opera in Three Acts) (excerpts)
Aria: Scherza infida in grembo al drudo (Act II) Aria: Dopo notte, atra e funesta (Act III)
Ms. von Otter
INTERMISSION
Jean-Philippe Rameau
Orchestral Suite from Les Boreades
Ouverture--Menuet
Act 1: Air gracieux--rondeau vif--gavotte vive et 2eme gavotte--contredanse en rondeau
Act 2: Gavotte legere et autre gavotte--air un peu gai--air andante et gracieux pour Orithie et ses compagnes--rigaudon pour les memes-loure--gavotte vive pour les suivants de Boree et gavotte pour Orithie
Act 3: Entree des peuples--menuets-gavottes--orage, tonnerre et tremblement-chceurs
Act 4: Entracte, suite des vents--entree-gavotte pour les Heures et les Zephirs et 2eme gavotte--rigaudons--ler air tres gai et 2eme air--air pour les Saisons et les Zephirs
Act 5: Andante--air vif--air un peu vif--air gracieux--air vif--pas de deux--menuets-lere contredanse tres vive et 2eme contredanse
Music from the Orchestral Suite will be drawn from the above listing of acts and movements.
Cantata: Ich habe genug, BWV 82a
Johann Sebastian Bach
Aria
Ich habe genug,
Ich habe den Heiland, das Hoffen der Frommen,
Auf meine begierigen Arme genommen;
Ich habe genug!
Ich habe ihn erblickt,
Mein Glaube hat Jesum ans Herze gedruckt;
Nun wiinsch ich noch heute mit Freuden
Von hinnen zu scheiden.
Ich habe genug!
Recitativo
Ich habe genug!
Mein Trost ist nur allein,
DaG Jesus mein und ich sein eigen mochte sein.
Im Glauben halt ich ihn,
Da seh ich auch mit Simeon
Die Freude jenes Lebens schon.
Lafit uns mit diesem Manne ziehn!
Ach, mochte mich von meines Leibes Ketten
Der Herr erretten!
Ach, ware doch mein Abschied hier,
Mit Freuden sagt ich, Welt, zu dir:
Ich habe genug!
Aria
Schlummert ein, ihr matten Augen,
Pallet sanft und selig zu!
Welt, ich bleibe nicht mehr hier,
Hab ich doch kein Teil an dir,
Das der Seele kbnnte taugen.
Hier muB ich das Elend bauen,
Aber dort, dort werd ich schauen
SiiGen Friede, stille Ruh.
Recitativo
Mein Gott! wenn kommt das schone: Nun!
Da ich in Frieden fahren werde
Und in dem Sande kuhler Erde,
Und dort, bei dir, im SchoBe ruhn
Der Abschied ist gemacht.
Welt, gute Nacht!
Aria
Ich freue mich auf meinen Tod,
Ach, hatt er sich schon eingefunden.
Da entkomm ich aller Not,
Die mich noch auf der Welt gebunden.
Aria
I have enough;
I have taken the Saviour, the hope of the Gentiles,
Into my yearning arms.
I have enough;
I have seen him,
My faith has clasped Jesus to my heart;
Now I desire already today
To depart with joy from here.
I have enough!
Recitativo
I have enough!
My only comfort is
That Jesus might be mine and I be his.
In faith I hold him,
And with Simeon I already see
The bliss of that life.
Let us depart with this man!
Ah, let the Lord redeem me
From the fetters of this my life.
Ah, if only the hour of my departure were come;
With joy I would say to you, O world,
I have enough!
Aria
Go to sleep, you weary eyes,
Gently, blessed, close your lids;
Oh, world, I will not longer tarry here,
As I have no more part in you
That could benefit my soul.
Here I live in misery,
But there, there I shall see
Sweet peace, quiet rest.
Recitativo
My God! When will the blessed "Now" come,
When I shall depart in peace,
And in the sand of the cool earth
Rest in your embrace
My farewells have been taken.
World, good night.
Aria
I long for my death;
Ah, if only it had already come.
Then I shall escape all distress
That still binds me here on earth.
Hercules (Musical Drama in Three Acts) (excerpt) George Frideric Handel
Aria: Resign thy club (Act II)
Resign thy club and lion's spoils, And fly from war to female toils! For the glittering sword and shield The spindle and the distaff wield! Thund'ring Mars no more shall arm thee, Glory's call no more shall warm thee: Venus and her whining boy Shall all thy wanton hours employ.
Ariodante (Opera in Three Acts) (excerpts) Handel
Aria: Scherza infida in grembo al drudo (Act II)
Scherza infida in grembo al drudo. Io tradito a morte in braccio Per tua colpa ora men vo. Ma a spezzar l'indegno laccio, Ombra mesta, e spirto ignudo, Per tua pena io tornerd.
Sport, faithless one, in your lover's embrace.
Because of your betrayal I now go forth
into the arms of death.
But to break this vile bond,
I will return to haunt you,
as a gloomy shade, a mere wraith.
Aria: Dopo notte, atra e funesta (Act III)
Dopo notte, atra e funesta, Splende in ciel piu vago il sole, E di gioia empie la terra. Mentre in orrida tempesta II mio legno e quasi assorto, Giunge in porto, E'l lido afferra.
After black and gloomy night
the sun shines more radiantly in the sky
and fills the earth with joy.
Whereas in the fearful tempest
my barque was almost engulfed,
now it has entered harbour,
and reached the shore.
UMS
and
KeyBank
present
Les Musiciens du Louvre
Marc Minkowski, Conductor
Anne Sofie von Otter,Mezzo-soprano
Program
Friday Evening, April 12, 2002 at 8:00 Hill Auditorium, Ann Arbor, Michigan
George Frideric Handel
Concerto Grosso in G Major, Op. 6, No. 1
A tempo giusto
Allegro
Adagio
Allegro
Allegro (Menuet)
Johann Sebastian Bach
Cantata: Ich habe genug, BWV 82a
Aria: Ich habe genug
Recitativo: Ich habe genug! Mein Trost
Aria: Schlummert ein, ihr matten Augen
Recitativo: Mein Gott! Wenn kommt das schone
Aria: Ich freue mich meinem Tod
Ms. von Otter INTERMISSION
Handel
Hercules (Musical Drama in Three Acts) (excerpt) Aria: Resign thy club (Act II)
Anodante (Opera in Three Acts) (excerpts)
Aria: Scherza infida in grembo al drudo (Act II) Aria: Dopo notte, atra e funesta (Act III)
Ms. von Otter
Jean-Philippe Rameau
Orchestral Suite from Les Boreades
Ouverture--Menuet
Act 1: Air gracieux--rondeau vif--gavotte vive et 2imc gavotte--contredanse en rondeau
Act 2: Gavotte legere et autre gavotte--air un peu gai-air andante et gracieux pour Orithie et ses compagnes-rigaudon pour les memes--loure--gavotte vive pour les suivants de Boree et gavotte pour Orithie
Act 3: Entree des peuples--menuets--gavottes--orage, tonnerre et tremblement--choeurs
Act 4: Entracte, suite des vents--entree--gavotte pour les Heures et les Zephirs et 2'nu' gavotte--rigaudons--ler air tres gai et 2mc air--air pour les Saisons et les Zephirs
Act 5: Andante--air vif--air un peu vif--air gracieux-air vif--pas de deux--menuets--l"c contredanse tres vive et 2"" contredanse
Music from the Orchestral Suite will be drawn from the above listing of acts and movements.
Fifty-ninth Performance of the 123rd Season
123rd Annual Choral Union Series
The photographing or sound recording of this concert or possession of any device for such pho?tographing or sound recording is prohibited.
This performance is sponsored by KeyBank. Additional support provided by media sponsor WGTE.
Les Musiciens du Louvre are funded by the City of Grenoble, the General Council of Isere, the Region Rhone-Alpes, and the Ministry of Culture and Communication (DRAC Rhone-Alpes).
The Les Musiciens du Louvre US Tour is presented with the generous support of the Florence Gould Foundation and the cultural services of the French Embassy.
Les Boreades is a posthumous work by Jean-Philippe Rameau with copyrights held by Alain Villain-Editions STIL Sari, 1982, 1998 and 2001.
Mezzo is the exclusive TV. partner of Les Musiciens du Louvre.
Les Musiciens du Louvre would like to thank bow maker Ren?-William Groppe in Metz, France.
Les Musiciens du Louvre and Anne Sofie von Otter appear by arrangement with ICM Artists, Ltd.
Large print programs are available upon request.
Concerto Grosso in G Major, Op. 6, No. 1
George Frideric Handel
Born February 23, 1685 in Halle, Germany Died April 14, 1759 in London
Tonight marks the third UMS performance of Handel's Concerto Grosso in G Major, Op. 6, No. 1. The Bath Festival Orchestra gave the UMS premiere of the Concerto Grosso in G Major on July 16, 1967 at Fair Lane on the Dearborn Campus of the University of Michigan.
The London Daily Post announced to its readership on October 29,1739:
This day are published proposals for print?ing by subscription with His Majesty's royal license and protection, Twelve Grand Concertos in seven parts, for four violins, a tenor [viola], a violoncello, with a thor?ough-bass for the harpsichord. Composed by Mr. Handel. Price to subscribers two guineas. Ready to be delivered by April next. Subscriptions are taken by the author at his house in Brook Street, Hanover Square.
As Christopher Hogwood writes in his Handel monograph (Thames & Hudson, 1984), the concerti grossi "were deliberately designed to compete in a field dominated by Corelli's Op. 6." The concerto form perfected byArcangelo Corelli (1653-1713), with its juxtaposition of a three-member concertino with the larger instrumental group (the rip-ieno), was extremely popular in England, where one of Corelli's most distinguished pupils, Francesco Geminiani lived. Handel, too, had known Corelli in person, having met him in Rome in 1707. There is an amusing story of how the twenty-two-year-old Handel grabbed the fifty-four-year-old Corelli's violin and showed him how he wanted a certain passage to be executed.
The older man apologized with typical understatement: "But my dear Saxon, this music is in the French style, which I do not understand." (It was the overture for Trionfo del Tempo [The Triumph of Time] by Handel.)
Thirty years later, Handel took a break from the writing of monumental oratorios to compose his Op. 6, in which he both competed with and paid homage to Corelli, while carrying the Corellian concerto grosso idea a great deal further. The concerti grossi were intended to function both as self-standing instrumental works and as over?tures or interludes played during oratorio performances.
Handel worked with amazing speed, completing the twelve concerti grossi in about a month (between the end of September and the end of October, 1739)-in other words, he finished a new piece every two or three days. One circumstance that made such extreme productivity possi?ble was the fact that Handel did not have to invent every single theme in the sixty-plus movements anew, but relied heavily on music already written--both by himself and others. Handel's borrowings in Op. 6 involve mainly two sources: Gottlieb Muffat's key?board collection Componimenti musicali (1736), and Domenico Scarlatti's Essercizi per cembalo (1739).
The first concerto is in five movements. In it, a grandiose, though relatively short, opening section is followed by a vigorous "Allegro" built upon a single two-measure phrase, developed and taken to different keys by both concertino and the full ensem?ble. A lyrical "Adagio," an upbeat and ener?getic fugue, and a dance-like finale round off the concerto. The latter is a good exam?ple of a borrowing, as it is heavily indebted to the second sonata in Scarlatti's Essercizi, also in G Major.
Cantata: Ich habe genug, BWV 82a
Johann Sebastian Bach
Born March 21, 1685 in Eisenach, Germany Died July 28, 1750 in Leipzig
Tonight marks the second UMS performance of]. S. Bach's Ich habe genug. Countertenor David Daniels and Les Violons du Roy gave the UMS premiere of Ich habe genug on March 22, 2001 at St. Francis ofAssisi Catholic Church.
The majority of Bach's 200-plus sacred cantatas are large-scale works with chorus, soloists and sizable instrumental forces, written for the weekly Sunday service or special occasions. Yet--depending perhaps on the availability of forces on a given day-some cantatas are scored more modestly, and six call for only one singer. One of these is Ich habe genug (I have enough), originally scored for bass voice, and first performed on the feast of the Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary, February 2, 1727, at St. Thomas' church in Leipzig. At least two movements of this cantata must have been written as early as 1725, because they appear in the second notebook for Anna Magdalena Bach compiled that year--in an arrange?ment for Bach's second wife, an accom?plished soprano, who probably performed these passages.
The cantata consists of three arias sepa?rated by two recitatives. The first and last arias feature an oboe in a virtuosic solo role. The lyrics, by an unknown author, express the joy of the pious soul at joining the Saviour after death--a paraphrase of Simeon's canticle (Luke 2:29-32), part of the Gospel reading for that day. The opening motif of the first movement is strongly rem?iniscent of the alto aria "Erbarme dich" (Have mercy) from the St. Matthew Passion, which was first performed in the same year (1727) as the cantata. The second aria, a
sacred lullaby, expresses the blissful going to sleep, while the last one, an extremely florid piece, exults at the thought of the much-awaited passage into a better world.
Hercules (Musical Drama in Three Acts) (excerpt)
Anodante (Opera in Three Acts) (excerpts)
Handel
Tonight marks the UMS premi&res of the Handel arias "Resign thy club" from Hercules, and "Scherza infida" and "Dopo notte" from Ariodante.
Italian opera in the first half of the nine?teenth century had conquered all the major musical centers of Europe. It became an international genre, one in which George Frideric Handel, German-born, Italian-trained and English by adoption, found both his livelihood and a most productive outlet for his genius. From 1710 to 1740, he composed more than thirty operas for London stages. For some of this time, he held a monopoly on opera as "Master of Musick" for the Royal Academy of Music, though in later years he had to contend with a rival company. (Eventually, his Italian opera company folded and Handel turned his attention to the English oratorio.)
The kind of opera Handel cultivated {opera seria or serious opera) is sometimes considered "opera without drama," as it lacks the large ensemble scenes of later operas where characters interact directly in music. Also, the da-capo aria, the predomi?nant musical form in opera seria, suggests stasis through its obligatory repetitions. Yet the force of Handel's music is such that the characters come alive, their personalities and aspirations always emerging clearly from the music with great clarity.
The oratorio Hercules (1744) tells the story of how this great hero of Greek antiq?uity, who has defeated the most fearsome enemies and carried out deeds that were beyond the powers of all other men, is undone as a result of his wife's unfounded jealousy. In Thomas Broughton's libretto (based on Sophocles and Ovid), Deianira wrongly assumes that Hercules is in love with the captive princess Iole. She gives him the magic garment of Nessus, which is sup?posed to rekindle conjugal love but which, in reality, kills its wearer.
In the recitative preceding her Act II aria "Resign your club and lion's spoils," Deianira claims that "a captive maid has conquer'd" her invincible husband; and in the aria she demands that he leave the battlefield and come home to devote himself entirely to domestic life. The passage from the martial to the marital domain is particularly strik?ing in the middle section of the aria; the framing "A" section drives the point home with insistent repetitions of individual notes and of entire phrases.
Ariodante dates from the last years of Handel's activity as an opera composer; it was first performed in London on January 8,1735. Handel had assembled a first-rate cast for the premiere. The title role was sung by the castrato Giovanni Carestini; Anna Maria Strada, whom Handel had discovered on a talent-hunting expedition to Italy, was Ginevra. The rest of the singers were English, including the virtuoso bass Gustavus Waltz, who inspired Handel to write a particularly demanding bass role in Ariodante--a rarity at the time.
We shall hear one excerpt from both Act II and Act III of the opera's three acts. For a while, Ariodante is led to believe that Ginevra has been unfaithful to him: in the aria "Scherza infida" (Act II), he laments his fate and declares that he will seek death. His despair finds beautiful expression in the dramatic opening motif and the insistent
repeated eighth-notes in the accompani?ment. The word morte (death) is marked by a particularly poignant harmony, and the word tradito (betrayed) by a memorable downward leap of a major seventh.
In Act III, Ariodante sings "Dopo notte" as Ginevra's innocence has been proven and nothing stands in the way of their union. The exuberant rhythmic energy of the music, the breathtaking coloraturas on the word gioia (joy) that span a full two octaves, couldn't be more different from the previous aria. They exude jubilant feelings of happiness, achieved after a great deal of suffering.
Orchestral Suite from Les Boreades
Jean-Philippe Rameau
Born September 25, 1683 in Dijon, France Died September 12, 1764 in Paris
Tonight marks the UMS premiere of Jean-Philippe Rameau's Orchestra Suite from Les Boreades.
Jean-Philippe Rameau is the great modernist among Baroque composers. He first made his name as a scholar who laid the ground?work of classical harmonic theory. The laws he revealed concerning the interactions among chords apply to a great deal of music written after his day; and accordingly, his own music contains innovations (harmonic, melodic, textural) rarely found in his con?temporaries. This is especially true of his stage works, which occupied him during the last thirty years of his life.
Rameau was fifty when his first opera, Hyppolite etAricie, was performed. Although he built on the traditions of French opera as established by Jean-Baptiste Lully in the sev?enteenth century, the novelty of his style gave rise to a long-standing controversy between the lullistes and the ramistes. Undeterred, Rameau continued to write
stage works for the rest of his life, complet?ing his last opera, Les Boreades, at the age of eighty. Work on a production at court was broken off after only two rehearsals. Did the opera's musical style fail to please, or did any of the lines offend the censor For what?ever reasons, the opera remained virtually unknown until 1982, when it was finally performed and recorded at the Aix-en-Provence festival under the direction of John Eliot Gardiner, and a facsimile edition of the manuscript score published.
The "Boreades" of the title are the descendants of Boreas, the mythological god of the North Wind. Alphise, Queen of the ancient Asian country of Bactria, is com?pelled by law to marry one of them, but she is in love with Abaris, whose parentage is unknown. She abdicates the crown in order to be free to follow her heart, but the angry Boreas kidnaps the princess. With his magic arrow, Abaris defeats Boreas. It is then revealed that Abaris is the son of Apollo by a nymph who is a daughter of Boreas, which means that the dictates of the gods and human love are reconciled and the lovers are united.
In his 1957 study of Rameau's music, the British scholar Cuthbert Girdlestone wrote of Les Boreades: "On first acquain?tance it is, as usual, the dances and sym?phonies that win our hearts." Since their rediscovery, these instrumental movements have been frequently performed and recorded without the sung numbers. Dancing is in fact as important in French opera (of any period) as singing. The ballet numbers in Les Boreades include a variety of fast and slow pieces, music representing the winds and the torture of Alphise at the hands of Boreas. Girdlestone called one of the move?ments "the queen of all his many contredans-es; I know of none where the lilt is so pos?sessive or the line so weird." Another page reminded him a Haydn quartet (Haydn was born the year before Hyppolite and Aricie
was written and was in fact, by 1763, writing his earliest quartets). The musicologist found every single movement full of trou?vailles, or great and surprising musical ideas, and it would be hard to disagree.
Program notes by Peter Laki.
A
nne Sofie von Otter is considered to be one of the finest singers of her generation and is sought after by many of the major conductors, orchestras, opera and recording companies of the world. Born in Sweden, her studies began in Stockholm and contin?ued with Vera Rozsa at London's Guildhall.
She commenced her professional career as a principal member of the Basel Opera before she was launched on an international career in which the operatic roles of Mozart and Strauss have formed a major part of her repertoire. Particularly renowned
for her interpretation of Oktavian in Der Rosenkavalier, this role has been recorded for EMI with Bernard Haitink and performed at the world's premiere opera houses.
An equally busy concert career has brought Anne Sofie von Otter regularly to the major concert halls of Europe and North America and she enjoys a regular partner?ship with some of the world's pre-eminent conductors. She is also an acclaimed recitalist and appears regularly around the world with her long-time accompanist, Bengt Forsberg.
An exclusive solo recording artist with Deutsche Grammophon, Anne Sofie von Otter has made a number of award-winning recital and chamber music discs; with orchestra she has recorded Weill, Berlioz, Mozart, Berg, Zemlinsky and Mahler. Anne
Sofie von Otter's current releases on DG include For the Stars, a unique collaboration with songwriter, arranger and producer, Elvis Costello, a recital disc of Beethoven, Meyerbeer and Spohr with Melvyn Tan and Mots d'amour, and a complete disc dedicated to the music of Cecile Chaminade.
Tonight's concert marks Anne Sofie von Otter's second appearance under UMS aus?pices. Ms. von Otter made her UMS debut in January 1999 in performance with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center.
M
arc Minkowski trained as a bassoonist and later taught himself the art of conducting, a talent he went on to pursue in the US under Charles Bruck at the Pierre Monteaux Memorial School. In 1982, he founded the group Les Musiciens du Louvre and began a committed defense of seventeenthand eighteenth-century repertoire, particularly from the French school, comprising of composers such as Rameau, Charpentier, Marais, Mondonville and Lully.
Unwilling to confine himself to the Baroque repertoire, he made his debut at the Opera Bastille with
Mozart's Idomeneo. That same year he recorded Rossini's L'Inganno Felice for Erato and Boieldieu's La Dame Blanche for EMI. Later he went on to conduct Der fliegende Hollander, which toured the Netherlands in 1997. In the same year he made
his first appearance at the Salzburg Festival with Die Entfiihrung dem Serail.
During the 20002001 season, he con?ducted a tribute concert to John Adams and
Arvo Part with the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France. During the 20012002 season, Mr. Minkowski conducted Haydn's Symphony No. 22; Poulenc's Concert Champetre and Stravinky's Pulcinella with the Orchestre Philarmonique de Radio France; Ravel's Tombeau de Couperin; Boulanger's Faust et Helene and Beethoven's Symphony No. 7 in Vienna.
Tonight's concert marks Maestro Minkowski's UMS debut.
B
ased in Grenoble, France, Les Musiciens du Louvre was brought together in 1982 by Marc Minkowski, and since 1987 has been firmly established as one of the major European period instrument ensembles.
The ensemble has worked on a number of recordings, including Handel's Teseo and Concerti Grossi Op. 3, Lully's Phaeton, Mouret's Les Amours de Ragonde, Rameau's Platee, Rebel's Les Elemens and Stradella's San Giovanni Battista, which earned it a Gramophone Award in 1993 for "Best Baroque Vocal Recording."
During the ensemble's 20012002 season, it performed a new production of Handel's Guilio Cesare at the Amsterdam Opera; revivals of La Belle Helene at the Theatre du Chatelet and Platee at the Opera de Paris; and a tribute to Offenbach with Anne Sofie von Otter at the Theatre du Chatelet.
In recent years, the group has made a number of significant recordings for Archiv Produktion--Deutsche Grammophon, including Gluck's Armide and Iphigenie en Tauride; Handel's La Resurrezione, Ariodante, and Hercules; as well as the soundtrack for William Klein's film, The Messiah.
At the Victoires 2001 de la Musique Classique et Jazz, it won the award for "Best
Orchestra of the Year" and the award for "Best Lyric Production of the Year" for La Belle Helene at the Theatre du Chatelet.
Tonight's concert marks Les Musiciens du Louvre's UMS debut.
Tour Direction
Harold Clarkson, Creative Partners in Music, America (for Konzertdirektion Hans Ulrich Schmid & Van Walsum Management)
Tour Manager Ann M. P. Woodruff
Travel Arrangements
Maestro Travel & Touring, North America-Europe
Les Musiciens du Louvre Marc Minkowski, Conductor
Violins I
Florian Deuter Monica Waisman Genevieve Bois Simon Heyerick Pedro Gandia Martin Simon Dariel Laurent Lagresle
Violins II
Nicolas Mazzoleni Eva Scheytt David Glidden Alexandra Delcroix Valerie Mascia Marie-Christine Desmonts
Violas
Nadine Davin Laurence Duval Catherine Puig Michel Renard
Cellos
Richte van der Meer Pascal Gessi Verene Westphal Vincent Malgrange
Doublebasses
Paolo Zuccheri Andre Fournier
FlutesPiccolo
Kate Clark Serge Sai'tta
Oboes
Yann Miriel Patrick Beaugiraud
Bassoons
Marije van der Ende Jean-Louis Fiat Ricardo Rapoport
Horns
Claude Maury Helen Mac Dougall
HarpsichordOrgan
Jory Vinikour
UMS
and
Borders
present
Takacs Quartet
and
Robert Pinsky, Poet
Edward Dusinberre, Violin Karoly Schranz, Violin Roger Tapping, Viola Andras Fejer, Cello
Program
Saturday Evening, April 13,2002 at 8:00
Lydia Mendelssohn Theatre, Ann Arbor, Michigan
the World for Love
Ben Jonson
Emily Dickinson
Robert Frost
Edwin Arlington Robinson
William Carlos Williams
His Excuse for Loving 249 (Wild Nights) To Earthward Eros Turannos Love Song
Mr. Pinsky
Leos Jandcek
String Quartet No. 2 (Intimate Letters) Andante--Con moto--Allegro Adagio--Vivace--Andante--Presto--Allegro--
Vivo--Adagio
Moderato--Adagio--Allegro Allegro--Andante--Con moto--Adagio--Tempo I
John Donne William Butler Yeats Louise Bogan Theodore Roethke P. Virgilius Maw, Trans. Robert Pinsky
The Good Morrow Adam's Curse Two Untitled Poems I Knew a Woman Georgics III (excerpt)
Mr. Pinsky
Samuel Barber
String Quartet, Op. 11 (excerpt)
Adagio INTERMISSION
Alan Dugan Frank Bidart Suzanne Quails Louise Gliick
Benjamin Britten
Love Song: I and Thou In My Desk
Early in a Rotten Summer Mock Orange
Mr. Pinsky
String Quartet No. 3, Op. 94
Duets (with moderate movement) Ostinato (very fast) Solo (very calm) Burlesque (fast--con fuoco) Recitative and Passacaglia
@@@@Robert Pinsky
The Want Bone
Mr. Pinsky
Sixtieth Performance of the 123rd Season
Thirty-ninth Annual Chamber Arts Series
The photographing or sound recording of this concert or possession of any device for such pho?tographing or sound recording is prohibited.
This performance is sponsored by Borders Group, Inc.
This performance is made possible in part by grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and from Michigan Humanities Council, an affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Additional support provided by media sponsor Michigan Radio.
Special thanks to Julie Ellison, U-M English Language and Literature Department, Naomi Andre, and the U-M School of Music for their involvement in this residency.
The Takacs Quartet appears by arrangement with CramerMarder Artists and records exclusively for DeccaLondon Records.
Robert Pinsky appears by arrangement with Steven Barclay Agency.
The Takacs Quartet is Quartet-in-Residence at the University of Colorado in Boulder and Fellow of The Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London.
Large print programs are available upon request.
AU the "World for Love
Notes by the Takdcs Quartet
String Quartet No. 2 (Intimate Letters) Leos Janacek
Born July 3, 1854 in Hukvaldy, Moravia Died August 12, 1928 in Moravskd Ostrava
String Quartet, Op. 11 (excerpt) Samuel Barber
Born March 9, 1910 in West Chester,
Pennsylvania Died January 23, 1981 in New York
String Quartet No. 3, Op. 94
Benjamin Britten
Born November 22, 1913 in Lowestoft,
Suffolk, England Died December 4, 1976 in Aldeburgh, England
P
oetry is a musical medium. And when poetry is read aloud, its per?formative nuances--phrasing, breathing, cadences--make its musical aspects particularly clear. We have devised this evening of poetry and string quartets because we are curious how interweaving spoken and played music may change the way performers and listeners respond to each. The string quartets that comprise this evening's offerings were selected in part because of their literary connections and the interdisciplinary influ?ences they exemplify.
Originally, we put together two separate programs, one revolving around love and the other around death, but--perhaps unsurprisingly--we found there was a cer?tain amount of overlap. This evening's pro?gram focuses on love but ties in death as well. The poetry and string quartets of All the World for Love show a progression of
mood, an arch from the turmoil of unre?quited love through consummation and ful?fillment to loss, resignation, and serenity.
Leos Janacek's String Quartet No. 2 was subtitled by the composer "Intimate Letters" and was composed simultaneously with a sequence of letters written late in his life to a young woman named Kamilla Stoesslova. The exact nature of Janacek's relationship with Stoesslova is not clear. Janacek and his wife became friends with Stoesslova and her husband, and they had various business dealings--but in 1927, when Janacek was seventy-three and Stoesslova thirty-four, his letters became intense confessions of love. It seems likely that she did not return his affection: he speaks of his "factual" feelings and her "fictional" attachment. But he creat?ed an elaborate romantic fantasy around her, which inspired him to write several operas where she was identified with the heroine, as well as his second quartet. In his letters, he talks about his longing being its own fulfillment, and there is clearly a joyous creativity inspired by his yearning. The quartet is sometimes performed with the composer's letters read aloud, but we feel his words do not convey the same impact as the music. For this program, therefore, we thought it would be interesting to pair the quartet with poetry.
Samuel Barber wrote his famous "Adagio" in 1936 as the second movement of a string quartet. It became popular in its own right arranged for string orchestra, in which form it was played after the deaths of Presidents Roosevelt and Kennedy. But the piece was inspired by a passage from the Roman poet Virgil's "Georgics," thought to be the one included in this program. The lines are part of a longer description of ani?mal husbandry and the sexual desire that inundates animals in the spring; the music clearly reflects the idea conveyed in the poem's imagery of a quiet slow beginning that swells to an intense rushing climax and then subsides to quiescence.
Benjamin Britten's String Quartet No. 3, written near the end of his life when the composer was in poor health, is closely asso?ciated with his last opera, Death in Venice, Op. 88 (1973). Based on Thomas Mann's famous novella, Britten's psychological drama deals with a middle-aged writer, Aschenbach, and his infatuation with the perfectly beautiful boy, Tadzio. Aschenbach has dedicated his life to a disciplined search for beauty, through his craft as a writer. Tadzio symbolizes all Aschenbach has been striving for, but in a natural, effortless form, that seems to undermine the writer's many years of toil. Aschenbach's descent from the lifelong discipline of his art to decadent, hopeless obsession with Tadzio leads to his death as he ignores the onset of a cholera epidemic to remain in Venice, following Tadzio through the streets and finally admitting to himself that he loves him. In Britten's quartet, we hear the lapping of the waters against gondolas at the beginning and end of the first movement, and perhaps the twisted, sneering street musicians in the weirdly manic dance in the middle of the menacing Burlesque.
Explicit references to the opera are in the quartet's last movement, subtitled "la Serenissima"--a name for Venice, where the finale was written. Five direct quotations from the opera make up the recitative: music associated with Venice itself, Aschenbach's pursuit of the boy, medita?tions on the nature of beauty, his unease at being harassed on the streets, and finally the anguished and impossible "I love you." The passacaglia which follows, based on the sound of Venetian bells, is in E Major, the key associated with Aschenbach in the opera. We feel this to be the emotional cen?ter of the work, trudging beautifully but inexorably towards a glimpse of death itself.
We have picked these three quartets to illuminate different aspects of love. Our intention was not that Mr. Pinsky should
feel confined by specific musical manifesta?tions of love, but rather that he might use the music as a loose framework for reading some of his favorite poems on love and death. The result is this experimental pro?gram, which we have found both challeng?ing and inspiring.
Frank Bidart (b. 1939), one of the most widely respected American contemporary poets, is the author of the influential In the Western Night: Collected Poems 1965-90 and of Desire (1997). He has received the Lila Wallace Foundation Writer's Award given by the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the Shelley Award of the Poetry Society of America. "In My Desk" is the second poem from the title sequence of In the Western Night.
Louise Bogan (1897-1970) gave American poetry an urbane, lyrical mode that is ironic with no loss of tenderness, witty yet not armored. Her poems "Women" and "Men Loved Wholly Beyond Wisdom" master prejudices and stereotypes about gender the way a great trainer masters a nervous beast--for instance, when she notices the cattle and snow water that women "do not notice." Like her friend, lover and colleague Theodore Roethke, Bogan can be called a superb "musician" among poets.
Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) wrote, "Nature is a haunted house--but Art--a House that tries to be haunted." Her great?ness as an artist involves her willing ability to invite the uncanny. Her invocation of "Wild Nights" suggests the rhythms, the images and even the subject matter of Protestant hymns, as do virtually all of Dickinson's poems--with an erotic force that seems to sweep its way effortlessly, almost without stopping to notice, far from the bounds of the hymnal.
John Donne (1572-1631) was largely re-dis?covered and celebrated by poets of the twentieth century. In poems like "The Good Morrow," T.S. Eliot and others admired the immediacy of language combined with an extravagant, muscular imaginative force. Donne's self-conscious display of intellectu?al leaps and turns dramatizes the soul in action. This energetic movement among things and attitudes is presented as the model and testament of love itself: a form of energy in and between two souls.
Alan Dugan (b. 1923) is the author of Poems Seven: New and Complete Poetry, which was awarded the National Book Award in 2001. Louise Bogan wrote about his work, "Dugan's sensibility is not limited to the caustic insight and dour conclusion; it can play, with sympathy, over the tragic and inexplicable, the fantastic and enigmatic, in nature and man."
Robert Frost (1874-1963) wrote many poems that have been better known, and more widely anthologized, than "To Earthward," but none more graceful. As Williams' "Love Song" shows how firmly musical the cadences and sounds of so-called "free verse" can be, Frost in this poem shows how free, varying and inventively a master can write in rhyme and meter.
Louise Gliick (b. 1943) is one of the fore?most living poets. Her work has received many awards, including the Pulitzer Prize in poetry for The Wild Iris. "Mock Orange," the opening poem in her book The Triumph of Achilles, has become one of the most-quoted and influential short poems in contemporary poetry. The directness of language, the com?plexity of thought, the urgency of feeling, the defiance of cliche and expectation in "Mock Orange" are all characteristic of her work.
Ben Jonson (1572-1637) remains the early, unexcelled master of writing in lines of amazing, balletic grace made out of plain language. The order and plainness of the words in "His Excuse for Loving" (the first poem of Jonson'sA Celebration ofCharis) feel in a way easy and natural, yet singing, as their long sentences snake idiomatically through the demanding, potentially rigid meter of "Twinkle Twinkle, Little Star." In the summer they spent at Stone Cottage, Yeats and Pound read Ben Jonson together.
Suzanne Quails (b. 1954) is a Californian who now lives in Brookline, Massachusetts. Her chapbook, Beauty, and Instinct was published in Graywolf Press' Take Three series in 1997. She has performed House of Wreckers, an autobiographical monologue, in New York and San Francisco.
Edwin Arlington Robinson (1869-1935) wrote with dazzling technical mastery. He also had the ability to transform human characters and their stories into archetypes of the largest proportions, as full of meaning as the figures of Greek tragedy. "Eros Turannos" demonstrates both of these abili?ties. It is interesting to note that the stanza beginning "Meanwhile we do no harm" establishes that the poem is spoken, in effect, by a town. The poem's form, a kind of hyper-ballad, makes that myth-like or tragic relation to a community all the more poignant--a great American work about catastrophic love as perceived by the neighbors.
Theodore Roethke (1908-1963) often wrote about nature, in a visionary mode. He also had a sensual, hearty, omnivorous imagina?tion that lets him write a convincing erotic poem like "I Knew a Woman." His reference in the poem to "Turn, and Counter-turn, and Stand" is a tribute to Ben Jonson, who coined those three English terms for the parts of a Greek ode, the strophe, antistro-
phe and epode. The erotic and poetic bond between Roethke and Bogan adds another element to representing their work in this evening's program.
P. Virgilius Maro (70 B.C.-19 B.C.), in the lines translated here, about the universal sexual awakening of springtime, provided a text which inspired Samuel Barber's "Adagio"--often associated with grief-according to the composer.
William Carlos Williams (1883-1963) built his lifework on the idea of a poetry built on the cadences and idiom of American speech. In a lyric poem like "Love Song" he weaves the plain American language into a pattern of recurring vowel and consonant sounds so intense and intricate that the poem is a free-verse equivalent of the rhymes in Robinson's "Eros Turannos."
William Butler Yeats (1865-1939), in "Adam's Curse," renders a second-person account of a conversation, in a manner so intimate and seemingly plain, with such a quiet presentation of stylized speech, that there is a quality of ambush in the intensity of the form (rhymed couplets) and the darkness of the final line. Like Ben Jonson writing a couple of centuries earlier, Yeats in this poem deploys an eloquence that is not showy, but penetrates like an extremely fine, almost invisible oil.
R
obert Pinsky, Poet Laureate of the United States (1997-2000), is poetry editor of the online journal Slate and a contributor to The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer on PBS. He teaches in the graduate writing program at Boston University.
His The Figured Wheel: New and Collected Poems 1965-1995 published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux in 1996, was nomi?nated for the Pulitzer Prize in poetry and also received the Lenore Marshall Award and the Ambassador Book Award of the English Speaking Union. His book-length poem An Explanation of America, awarded the Saxifrage Prize when it was first pub?lished in 1980, has been published by Princeton University Press in a new edition. History of My Heart, chosen for the 1985 William Carlos Williams Prize of the Poetry Society of America, has also been published in a new edition by Farrar, Straus & Giroux. His collection of essays, Poetry and the World, was nominated for the National Book Critics Circle award in criticism. He is also co-translator of The Separate Notebooks, poems by Nobel Prize winner Czeslaw Milosz. His book The Inferno of Dante, a new verse translation, was awarded the Los Angeles Times Book Award in poetry and the Howard Morton Landon Prize for translation.
His latest collection of poems is Jersey Rain, and in November 1999 Norton pub?lished the anthology Americans' Favorite Poems, a collection of poems featured in Robert Pinsky's Favorite Poem Project, and in June 2002 will publish Poems to Read: On Youth, Darkness, Passion and Other Subjects. In 1996, Pinsky received the Shelley Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America. His writing has also won awards from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts and the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
His work has appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies including Antaeus, The New Yorker, Paris Review, The Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry, The Harper American Literature, The Harvard Book of Contemporary Poetry and The Vintage Book of Contemporary Poetry, Best Poems of 1990, Best Poems of 1991, Best Poems of 1992. Before coming to Boston University he taught at Wellesley and Berkeley, and was poetry editor of The New Republic from 1979 to 1986.
Tonight's performance marks Robert Pinsky's UMS debut.
T
he Takacs Quartet is recognized as one of the world's greatest string quartets. Since its formation in 1975, the ensemble has appeared regularly in every major music cap?ital and prestigious festival. The Quartet is based in Boulder, Colorado, where it has held a Residency at the University of Colorado since 1983. The Takacs is a Resident Quartet at the Aspen Festival and
its members are also Visiting Fellows at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London.
The Takacs Quartet's recording of the Bartok cycle received the Gramophone "Chamber Music Recording of the Year" award in 1998, and in 1999, it was nominated for a Grammy. Its subsequent recording release for DeccaLondon, with which it signed an exclusive recording con?tract in 1988, includes the Schubert "Trout" Quintet with Andreas Haefliger. The ensemble's latest release features Dvorak's Quartet, Op. 51 and his Piano Quintet, Op. 81, also with Mr. Haefliger. This summer the Takacs begins recording the entire Beethoven quartet cycle for Decca,
scheduled to be completed in 2004.
During the 20012002 season, after being featured at the Cliburn Festival, the Takacs Quartet performs over forty concerts in the US and tours extensively in Europe. The Takacs will perform Bartok cycles in Seville, Madrid, Amsterdam's Concertgebouw, and in Cleveland, presented by the Cleveland Orchestra.
The Takacs Quartet was formed by Gabor Takacs-Nagy, Karoly Schranz, Gabor Ormai, and Andras Fejer in 1975, while all four were students at Budapest's Liszt Academy. It first received international attention in 1977, winning First Prize and the Critics' Prize at the International String Quartet Competition in Evian, France. In January 2001, they were bestowed with the Order of Merit of the Knightcross by the Republic of Hungary.
Tonight's performance marks the Takacs Quartet's fourth appearance under VMS auspices. The Quartet made their UMS debut in February 1984.
UMS
presents
Ian Bostridge
Tenor
Julius Drake, Piano
Der Strom, D. 565
(Anon.)
Mein Leben walzt sich murrend fort, Es steigt und fallt in krausen Wogen, Hier baumt es sich, jagt nieder dort In wilden Ziigen, hohen Bogen.
Das stille Tal, das grime Feld Durchrauscht es nun mit leisem Beben, Sich Ruh' ersehnend, ruhigen Welt, Ergotzt es sich am ruhigen Leben.
Doch Dimmer findend, was es sucht, Und burner sehnend tost es weiter, Unmutig rollt's auf steter Flucht, Wird Dimmer froh, wird nimnier heiter.
Auf der Donau, D. 553
(Johann Mayrhofer)
Auf der Wellen Spiegel schwimmt der Kahn, Alte Burgen ragen himmelan, Tannenwalder rauschen geistergleich, Und das Herz im Busen wird uns weich.
Denn der Menschen Werke sinken all', Wo ist Turm, wo Pforte, wo der Wall, Wo sie selbst, die Starken,
erzgeschirmt, Die in Krieg und (agden hingestiirmt
Trauriges Gestriippe wuchert fort, Wahrend fronimer Sage Kraft verdorrt: Und im kleinen Kahne wird uns bang, Wellen drohn wie Zeiten Untergang.
Lied eines Schiffers an die Dioskuren, D. 360
(Mayrhofer)
Dioskuren, Zwillingssterne, Die ihr leuchtet meinem Nachen, Mich beruhigt auf dem Meere Eure Milde, euer Wachen.
Wer auch fest in sich begriindet, Unverzagt dem Sturm begegnet, Fiihlt sich doch in euren Strahlen Doppelt mutig und gesegnet.
The River
My life rolls grumbling onwards, Rising and falling in curling waves, Here it rears up, there it plunges down With wild spurts, soaring curves.
Now gently quivering, it ripples through Silent valleys and green fields, Yearning for peace, a tranquil world, And delighting in a life of calm.
Yet never finding what it seeks, Forever longing it surges onward, Discontented it rolls on in ceaseless flight, Never joyful, never serene.
On the Danube
The boat glides on the mirror of the waves, Old castles soar heavenwards, Pine-forests stir like ghosts, And our hearts grow faint within our breasts.
For the works of man all perish,
Where now is the tower, the gate, the rampart,
Where are the mighty themselves, in their
bronze armor, Who stormed forth to battle and the chase
Mournful brushwood grows rampant While the power of pious myth fades: And in our little boat we grow afraid, Waves like time, threaten doom.
Sailor's Song to the Dioscuri
Dioscuri, twin stars, Shining on my boat, Your gentleness and vigilance Comfort me on the ocean.
However firmly a man believes in himself, However fearlessly he meets the storm, He feels doubly valiant and blessed In your light.
continued, please turn page quietly.
Dieses Ruder, das ich schwinge, Meeresfluten zu zerteilen, Hange ich, so ich geborgen, Auf an eures Tempels Saulen.
Nachtstuck, D. 672
(Mayrhofer)
Wenn iiber Berge sich der Nebel breitet, Und Luna mit Gewolken kampft, So ninimt der Alte seine Harfe, und schreitet, Und singt waldeinwarts und gedanipft:
"Du heilge Nacht: Bald ist's vollbracht,
Bald schlaf ich ihn, den langen Schlumnier, Der mich erlost van alleni Kunimer."
Die griinen Baunie rauschen dann: "Schlaf siiss, du guter, alter Mann," Die Graser lispeln wankend fort: "Wir decken seinen Ruheort;"
Und mancher Iiebe Vogel ruft: "O lasst ihn ruhn in Rasengruft!" Der Alte horcht, der Alte schweigt, Der Tod hat sich zu ihm geneigt.
Viola, D. 786
(Franz von Schober)
Schneeglocklein, o Schneeglocklein,
In den Auen lautest du,
Lautest in deni stillen Hain,
Laute immer, Iaute zu, Iaute immerzu!
Denn du kiindest frohe Zeit, Friihling naht, der Briiutigain, Koninit mit Sieg vom Winterstreit, Dem er seine Eiswehr nahm.
Darum schwingt der goldne Stift, Dass dein Silberhelm erschallt, Und dein liebliches Gediift Leis' wie Schmeichelruf entwallt:
Dass die Blunien in der Erd" Steigen aus dem diistern Nest, Und des Brautigams sich wert Schmiicken zu dem Hochzeitsfest.
Schneeglocklein, o Schneeglocklein, In den Auen lautest du, Lautest in dem stillen Hain, Laut' die Blunien aus der Ruh'!
This oar which I ply,
To cleave the ocean's waves,
I shall hang, once I have landed safely,
On the pillars of your temple.
Nocturne
When the mists spread over the mountains And the moon battles with the clouds, The old man takes his harp, and walks Towards the wood, quietly singing:
"Holy night, Soon it will be done. Soon I shall sleep the long sleep Which will free me from all grief."
Then the green trees rustle: "Sleep sweetly, good old man," And the swaying grasses whisper: "We shall cover his resting place."
And many a sweet bird calls: "Let him rest in his grassy grave!" The old man listens, the old man is silent. Death has inclined towards him.
Violet
Snowdrop, snowdrop, You ring through the meadows, You ring in the silent grove, Ring on, ring on forever!
For you herald a time of joy; Spring approaches, the bridegroom, Victorious from his struggle with winter, From whom he wrested his icy weapon.
So your golden rod swings
That your silver bell shall resound,
And your sweet fragrance wafts gently away,
Like an enticing call:
So that the flowers in the earth
Rise from their gloomy nests,
And to prove worthy of the bridegroom
Adorn themselves for the wedding feast.
Snowdrop, snowdrop, You ring through the meadows, You ring in the silent grove, Ring the flowers from their sleep!
Du Viola, zartes Kind, Horst zuerst den Wonnelaut, Und sie stehet auf geschwind, Schmiicket sorglich sich als Braut.
Hiillet sich in's grune Kleid, Nininit den Mantel sammetblau, Nininit das giildene Geschmeid, Und den Brillantentau.
Eilt dann fort mit macht'gem Schritt, Nur den Freund im treuen Sinn,
treuen Sinn,
Ganz von Liebesglut durchgliiht, Sieht nicht her und sieht nicht hin.
Doch ein angstliches Gefiihl Ihre kleine Brust durchwallt, Denn es ist noch rings so still, Und die Liifte weh'n so kalt.
Und sie hemnit den schnellen Lauf, Schon bestrahit von Sonnenschein, Doch mit Schrecken blickt sie auf, Denn sie stehet ganz allein.
Schwestern nicht, nicht Brautigam Zugedrungen! und verschmaht! Da durchschauert sie die Scham, Fliehet wie vom Sturm geweht.
Fliehet an den fernsten Ort, Wo sich Gras und Schatten deckt, Spaht und lauschet immerfort, Ob was rauschet und sich regt.
Und gekranket und getauscht Sitzet sie und schluchzt und weint, Van der tiefsten Angst zerfleischt, Ob kein Nahender erscheint.
Schneeglocklein, o Schneeglocklein, In den Auen lautest du, Lautest in dem stillen Hain, Liiut die Schwestern ihr herzu!
Rose nahet, Lilie schwankt, Tulp' und Hyazinthe schwellt, Windling kommt daher gerankt, Und Narziss hat sich gesellt.
Da der Fruhling nun erscheint, Und das frohe Fest beginnt, Sieht er alle, die vereint, Und vermisst sein liebstes Kind.
Alle schickt er suchend fort, Um die eine, die ihm wert, Und sie kommen an den Ort, Wo sie einsam sich verzehrt.
Violet, tender child,
Is the first to hear the joyful sound;
he rises quickly,
And adorns herself carefully as a bride.
She wraps herself in a green gown, Takes a velvety blue mantle, Her golden jewels And her dewy diamonds.
Then she hastens forth with powerful gait, With thoughts only of her beloved in her
faithful heart, Inflamed with ardent love, Looking neither this way nor that.
But a feeling of apprehension Troubles her tiny breast, For all around it is still so quiet, And the winds blow so cold.
She checks her rapid course. Already the sun shines on her, But she looks up in terror, For she is quite alone.
No sisters! No bridegroom!
She has been too pressing! She has been rejected!
Then she shudders with shame
And flees, as if swept away by the storm.
She flees to the remotest spot, Where grass and shade conceal her; She constantly peers and listens To see if anything rustles or stirs.
Hurt and disappointed He sits sobbing and weeping, Tormented by the profound fear That no one will appear.
Snowdrop, snowdrop, You ring through the meadows, You ring in the silent grove, Call her sisters to her.
The rose approaches, the lily sways, The tulip and hyacinth swell; The bindweed trails along, And the narcissus joins them.
And now, as spring appears And the happy festival begins, He sees them all united, But misses his dearest child.
He sends them all off to search For the one he cherishes, And they come to the place Where she languishes alone.
continued, please turn page (juicily.
Doch es sitzt das liebe Herz Stunim und bleich, das Haupt gebuckt, Ach, der Lieb' und Sehnsucht Schmerz Hat die Zartliche erdriickt.
Schneeglcicklein, o Schneeglocklein, In den Auen lautest du, Lautest in dem stillen Hain, Laut Viola sanfte Ruh'!
Abendstern, D. 806
(Mayrhofer)
Was weilst du einsam an dem Himmel, O schemer Stern und bist so mild; Warum entfernt das funkelnde Gewimmel Der Briider sich von deinem Bild "Ich bin der Liebe treuer Stern, Sie halten sich von Liebe fern."
So solltest du zu ihnen gehen, Bist du der Liebe, zaud're nicht! Wer mochte denn dir widerstehen Du susses eigensinnig Licht. "Ich sae, schaue keinen Keim, Und bleibe trauernd still daheim."
Gondelfahrer, D. 808
(Mayrhofer)
Es tanzen Mond und Sterne Den fliicht'gen Geisterreih'n: Wer wird yon Erdensorgen Befangen immer sein!
Du kannst in Mondesstrahlen Nun, meine Barke, wallen; Und aller Schranken los, Wiegt dich des Meeres Schoss.
Vom Markusturme tonte Der Spruch der Mitternacht: Sie schlummern friedlich alle, Und nur der Schiffer wacht.
Auflosung, D. 807
(Mayrhofer)
Verbirg dich, Sonne,
Denn die Gluten der Wonne
Versengen mein Gebein;
Verstummet, Tone,
Friilings Schone
Fltichte dich und lass mich allein!
But the sweet creature sits there Dumb and pale, her head bowed; Alas, the pain of love and longing Has crushed the tender one.
Snowdrop, snowdrop, You ring through the meadows, You ring in the silent grove, Ring for Violet's sweet repose!
The Evening Star
Why do you linger all alone in the sky,
Fair star For you are so gentle;
Why does the host of sparkling brothers
Shun your sight
"I am the faithful star of love;
They keep far away from love."
If you are love,
You should go to them without delay!
For who could resist you,
Sweet, wayward light
"I sow no seed, I see no shoot,
And remain here, silent and mournful."
The Gondolier
Moon and stars dance The fleeting round of the spirits: Who would be forever fettered By earthly cares!
Now, my boat, you can drift
In the moonlight;
Free from all restraints,
You are rocked on the bosom of the sea.
From the tower of St. Mark's Midnight's decree tolled forth: All sleep peacefully, Only the boatman wakes.
Dissolution
Hide yourself, sun,
For the fires of rapture
Burn through my whole being;
Be silent, sounds,
Spring Beauty,
Flee, and let me be alone!
Quillen doch aus alien Falten
Meiner seele liebliche Gewalten,
Die mich umseschlingen,
Himmlisch singen.
Geh unter, Welt, und store
Nimmer die siissen, atherischen Chore.
Widerschein, D. 949
(Franz Xaver von Schlecta)
Harrt ein Fischer auf der Briicke, Die Geliebte saumt, Schmollend taucht er seine Blicke In den Bach und traumt.
Doch die lauscht im nahen Flieder, Und ihr Bildchen strahlt, Jetzt aus klaren Wellen wider, Treuer nie gemalt.
Und er sieht's! Und er kennt die Bander, Kennt den siissen Schein, Und er halt sich am Gelander, Sonst zieht's ihn hinein.
Alinde, D. 904
(lohann Friedrich Rochlitz)
Die Sonne sinkt ins tiefe Meer, Da wollte sie kommen. Geruhig trabt der Schnitter einher, Mir ist's beklonimen.
"Hast, Schnitter, criein Liebchen nicht gesehn Alinde, Alinde!"
"Zu Weib und Kindern muss ich gehn, Kann nicht nach andern Dirnen sehn; Sie warten mein unter der Linde."
Der Mond betritt die Himmelsbahn, Noch will sie nicht kommen. Dort legt ein Fischer das Fahrzeug an, Mir ist's beklonimen.
"Hast, Fischer, mein Liebchen nicht gesehn Alinde, Alinde!"
"Muss suchen, wie mir die Reusen stehn, Hab nimmer Zeit nach Jungfern zu gehn, Schau, welch einen Fang ich finde."
Die lichten Sterne ziehn herauf, Noch will sie nicht kommen. Dart eilt der Ja'ger in riistigem Lauf, Mir ist's beklonimen.
From every recess of my soul
Gentle powers well up,
And envelop me,
With celestial song.
Dissolve, world, and never more
Disturb the sweet ethereal choirs.
Reflections
A fisherman waits on the bridge, His beloved is late, Sullenly he dips his gaze Into the brook, dreaming.
But she is lurking in the nearby lilac bushes, And now her image, Never more truly portrayed, Shines forth from the clear waters.
And he sees it! He recognizes the ribbons,
And her sweet radiance,
And he holds on to the railings,
For if he did not he would be drawn in.
AJinde
The sun sinks into the deep ocean, She was due to come. Calmly the reaper walks by. My heart is heavy.
'Reaper, have you not seen my love
Alinde, Alinde!"
"I must go to my wife and children,
I cannot look for other girls
They are waiting for me beneath the linde."
The moon entered its heavenly course, She still does not come. There a fisherman lands his boat. My heart is heavy.
'Fisherman, have you not seen my love Alinde, Alinde!"
"I must see how my oyster baskets are, I never have time to chase after girls; Look what a catch I have!"
The bright stars appear,
She still does not come.
The huntsman rides swiftly along.
My heart is heavy.
continual, please turn page quietly.
"Hast, lager, mein Liebchen nicht gesehn Alinde, Alinde!"
"Muss nach dem briiunlichen Rehbock gehn, Hab nimmer Lust nach Ma'deln zu sehn; Dort schleicht er im Abendwinde."
In schwarzer Nacht steht hier der Hain, Noch will sie nicht kommen. Von alien Lebend'gen irr ich allein, Bang und beklommen.
Dir, Echo, darf ich mein Leid gestehn: Alinde, Alinde!"
"Alinde," liess Echo leise hertiberwehn; Da sah ich sie mir zu Seite stehn: "Du suchtest so treu, nun linde!"
Rastlose Liebe, D. 222
(Johann Wolfgang von Goethe)
Dem Schnee, dem Regen, Dem Wind entgegen, Im Dampf der Kliifte, Durch Nebeldufte, Inimer zu! Immer zu! Ohne Rast und Ruh!
Lieber durch Leiden Wollt ich mich schlagen, Als so viel Freuden Des Lebens ertragen.
Alle das Neigen Von Herzen zu Herzen, Ach, wie so eigen Schaffet das Schmerzen!
Wie soil ich fliehen Wiilderwiirts ziehen Alles vergebens! Krone des Lebens, Gliick ohne Ruh, Liebe, bist du!
Geheimes,D.719
(Goethe)
Uber meines Liebchens Augeln Stehn verwundert alle Leute; Ich, der Wissende, dagegen, Weiss recht gut, was das bedeute.
Denn es heisst: ich liebe diesen, Und nicht etwa den und jenen. Lasset nur, ihr guten Leute, Euer Wundern, euer Sehnen!
"Huntsman, have you not seen my love Alinde, Alinde!"
"I must go after the brown roebuck, I never care to look for girls; There he goes in the evening breeze!"
The grove lies here in blackest night, She still does not come. I wander alone, away from all mankind, Anxious and troubled.
"To you, Echo, I can confess my sorrow: Alinde, Alinde!" "Alinde," came the soft echo; Then 1 saw her at my side. "You searched so faithfully. Now you find me.'
Restless Love
Into the snow, the rain And the wind, Through steamy ravines, Through mists, Onwards, ever onwards! Without respite!
I would sooner fight my way Through suffering, Than endure so much Of life's joy.
This affection
Of one heart for another,
Ah, how strangely
It creates pain!
How shall I flee Into the forest It is all in vain! Crown of life, Happiness without peace, This, O Love, is you!
A Secret
Everyone is astonished
At the eyes that my sweetheart makes;
But I, who understand,
Know very well what they mean.
For they are saying: he is the one I love,
Not this one or that one.
So, good people,
Cease your wondering and your longing!
la, mit ungeheuren Machten Blicket sie wohl in die Runde; Doch sie sucht nur zu verkiinden Ihm die nachste siisse Stunde.
Versunken, D. 715
(Goethe)
Voll Locken kraus ein Haupt so rund!
Und darf ich dann in solchen reichen Haaren
Mit vollen Handen hin
und wider fahren,
Da fuhl ich mich von Herzensgrund gesund, Und kiiss ich Stirne, Bogen,
Augen, Mund,
Dann bin ich frisch und immer wieder wund. Der fiinfgezackte Kanim, wo sollt' er stocken Er kehrt schon wieder zu den Locken. Das Ohr versagt sich
nicht dem Spiel;
So zart zum Scherz, so liebeviel,
Doch wie man auf dem Kopfchen kraut,
Man wird in solchen reichen Haaren
Fiir ewig auf und nieder fahren.
Voll Locken kraus, ein Haupt, so rund.
Der Winterabend, D. 938
(Karl Gottfried von Leitner)
Es ist so still, so heimlich urn mich, Die Sonne ist unter, der Tag entwich. Wie schnell nun heran der Abend graut! Mir ist es recht, sonst ist mir's zu laut.
Jetzt aber ist's ruhig, es
hamniert kein Schmied, Kein Klempner, das Volk
verlief und ist miid.
Und selbst, dass nicht rass'le der Wagen Lauf, Zog Decken der Schnee durch
die Gassen auf.
Wie tut mir so wohl der selige Frieden! Da sitz ich im Dunkeln, ganz abgeschieden, So ganz fiir mich; nur der Mondenschein Kommt leise zu mir ins Gemach. Er kennt mich schon und lasst mich schweigen, Nimmt nur seine Arbeit, die Spindel, das Gold, Und spinnet stille, webt und lachelt hold, Und hangt dann sein schimmerndes
Schleiertuch.
Ringsum an Gerat und Wanden aus. Ist gar ein stiller, ein lieber, Besuch,
Indeed, she may well look about her With a mightily powerful eye, But she seeks only to give him a foretaste Of the next sweet hour.
Rapt Absorption
A head so round, so full of curly locks! And when am I allowed to fill my hands With this abundant hair, and then
run them to and fro.
Then I feel good from the depths of my heart And when I kiss her forehead, eyebrows,
yes and mouth
I am afflicted afresh and ever again. This five-toothed comb, where should it stop Already it returns to your curls. The ear, too, cannot refrain from
joining in the game;
So delicate it is in playful dalliance, so full of love.
But he who fondles this little head
Will, in such abundant hair,
Move his hands up and down forever.
A head so round, so full of curly locks!
The Winter Evening
It is so silent and secret all around me, The sun has set, the day has vanished. How swiftly now the evening grows gray! It suits me well; day is too loud for me.
But now it is peaceful,
no blacksmith hammers, And no plumber. The people have
dispersed, tired.
And, lest carts should rattle on their way, The snow has even draped blankets
through the streets.
How welcome to me is this blissful peace! Here I sit in the darkness, quite secluded, Quite self-contained; only the moonlight Comes softly into my room. It knows me and lets me be silent, And just takes up its work, the spindle, the gold, And spins and weeps silently, smiling sweetly And then hangs its
shimmering veil
Over the furniture and walls all around. It is a silent and beloved visitor
continued, please turn page quietly.
Macht mir gar keine Unruh' im Haus. Will er bleiben, so hat er Ort, Freut's ihn nimmer, so geht er fort.
Ich sitze dann stumni im Fenster gem Und schaue hinauf in Gewcilk und Stern Denke zuriick, ach weit, gar weit In eine schone verschwundne Zeit. Denke an sie, an das Gltick der Minne Seufze still und sinne und sinne.
Die Sterne, D. 939
(Leitner)
Wie blitzen die Sterne so hell
durch die Nacht! Bin oft schon dariiber vom
Schlummer erwacht. Doch schelt' ich die lichten
Gebilde drum nicht, Sie ilben im Stillen manch
heilsame Pflicht.
Sie wallen hoch oben in Engelgestalt, Sie leuchten dem Pilger durch
Heiden und Wald.
Sie schweben als Boten der Liebe umher, Und tragen oft Kiisse weit iiber das Meer.
Sie blicken dem Dulder recht mild ins Gesicht, Und saumen die Tranen mit silberiiem Licht. Und weisen von Grabern gar trostlich
rostlich und hold Uns hinter das Blaue mit Fingern von Gold.
So sei denn gesegnet, du strahlige Schar! Und leuchte mir lange noch
freundlich und klar! Und wenn ich einst liebe, seid
hold dem Verein, Und euer Geflimmer lasst Segen uns sein!
Die Gotter Griechenlands, D. 667
(Friedrich von Schiller)
Schone Welt, wo bist du Kehre wieder, Holdes Bliitenalter der Natur! Ach, nur in dem Feenland der Lieder Lebt noch deine fabelhafte Spur. Ausgestorben trauert das Gefilde, Keine Gottheit zeigt sich meinem Blick, Ach, von jenem lebenwarmen Blieb der Schatten nur zuriick.
That causes no disturbance in my house. If it wishes to stay, there is room, If it is not happy, then it goes away.
Then I like to sit silently at the window, Gazing up at the clouds and stars, Thinking back to long, long ago, To a beautiful, vanished past. I think of her, of love's happiness And sigh softly, and muse.
The Stars
How brightly the stars glitter
through the night! I have often been aroused by
them from slumber. But I do not chide the shining
beings for that, For they secretly perform many
a benevolent task.
They wander high above in the form of angels, They light the pilgrim's way through
heath and wood.
They hover like harbingers of love, And often bear kisses far across the sea.
They gaze tenderly into the sufferer's face, And fringe his tears with silver light; And comfortingly, gently, direct us
away from the grave, Beyond the azure with fingers of gold.
I bless you, radiant throng!
Long may you shine upon me with
your clear, pleasing light! And if one day I fall in love, then smile
upon the bond, And let your twinkling be a blessing upon us.
The Gods of Greece
Fair world, where are you Return again, Sweet springtime of nature! Alas, only in the magic land of song Does your fabled memory live on. The deserted fields mourn, No god reveals himself to me, Bilde of that warm, living image Only a shadow has remained.
Translations O1988 Richard Wigmore
UMS
presents
Ian Bostndge
Tenor
Julius Drake, Piano
Program
Sunday Afternoon, April 14, 2002 at 4:00
Lydia Mendelssohn Theatre, Ann Arbor, Michigan
Songs of Franz Schubert i
Der Strom, D. 565
Auf der Donau, D. 553
Lied eines Schiffers an die Dioskuren, D. 360
Nachtstiick, D. 672
Viola, D. 786
Abendstern, D. 806
Gondelfahrer, D. 808
Auflosung, D. 807
INTERMISSION
II
Widerschein, D. 949
Alinde, D. 904
Rastlose Liebe, D. 222
Geheimes, D. 719
Versunken, D. 715
Der Winterabend, D. 938
Die Sterne, D. 939
Die Gotter Griechenlands, D. 677
The audience is politely asked to withhold applause until the end of each group of songs. Please do not applaud after the individual songs.
Sixty-first Performance of the 123rd Season
Seventh Annual Song Recital Series
Support for this performance is provided by media sponsor WGTE.
The Steinway piano used in this evening's performance is made possible by Hammell Music, Inc., Livonia, Michigan.
Mr. Bostridge appears by arrangement with ICM Artists, Ltd.
The photographing or sound recording of this concert or possession of any device for such photographing or sound recording is prohibited.
Large print programs are available upon request.
F
ranz Schubert was born into a world where singing and playing songs was an amateur's, dilettante's, activity. It was nothing significant, nothing to be taken seriously, and surely nothing that could advance a com?poser's career. It was large-scale works that created the world's famous composers. Symphony, Sonata, and, in the vocal world, Opera--these were the staff of musical life in Vienna. To be sure, great examples of song had been written by his predecessors, Zumsteeg, Zelter, and of course, Mozart, but nothing to ensure immortality. Schubert's great contemporary, Beethoven, was con?stantly working with songs, but in between larger projects. As this writer has said in these pages on previous occasions, whenever an artist chooses to perform Schubert lieder for us: our whole concept of what a song is was forged indelibly and permanently by one Franz Schubert. Yes, his chamber music is marvelous, as are his symphonies and piano sonatas. But whatever your instru?ment, if you want to know Schubert, listen to his songs. If you want to know song, lis?ten to Schubert!
On what does this specific talent for songwriting rely First and foremost, Schubert's ability as a melodist may have been equaled, but certainly never surpassed. In 600 examples of this genre, there are per?haps ten which lack a memorable tune. These melodies may be simple and accessi?ble to any ear, occasionally embroidered with ornament and grace, occasionally more unpredictable, but the tune remains the principal hallmark of Schubert's style. From the pianist's point of view, Schubert pro?vides an inexhaustible banquet of variety and imaginative writing. Here it is of special importance to remember that regarding the accompaniment, Schubert's songs are with?out ancestors. His predecessors often chose to underline the singer's tune with the pianist's right hand, thus leaving only one
hand to create rhythm and harmony. Schubert has unshackled the singing line, and has allowed the pianist to use his full armory to create the context for the poem. At only seventeen, Schubert published his Gretchen am Spinnrade, an acknowledged masterpiece now as then. If this text had been set by another, we might hear no spin?ning wheel! We can scarcely imagine this today, so accustomed are we to Schubert's legacy for the keyboard part.
Much has been said of Schubert's lack of discrimination or discernment in his choice of poetry to set to music. There is truth to this, but the same can be said of Brahms and much later of Richard Strauss as well. It is clear that Schubert seems to select poems that "need" music; these texts are eminently "composable." He is attracted to depths of feeling that others might ignore or reject as too sentimental. His least suc?cessful songs are often those that use texts of over-intellectual philosophy or global con?cepts. His most treasured masterpieces in this genre always involve the heart. His wide circle of friends included many poets, both amateurs and professionals, and his affec?tion for them often encouraged him to set a text to music that another composer might overlook.
In addition to his vast supply of accom?paniments, Schubert makes use of many dif?ferent forms in his songs, and seems to be comfortable with all of them. The most tra?ditional form, and the one he inherited from the generation before him is the pure strophic song, wherein the music is repeated exactly for each verse of text with minimal or no changes. This puts all the interpreta?tive responsibility on the performers' shoul?ders, and it is difficult for even Schubert to find music that fits each line of verse per?fectly. The least traditional form is that of the scena or ballad, where completely new music is used for each section of the poem. In this most rhapsodic of choices for a com-
poser, nothing is unified. In between these two extremes lie the majority of Schubert's songs, and it is perhaps in the modified strophic and through-composed forms that he is at his most inventive. In the former, small but significant adjustments are made to music that seems to repeat. Schubert may change minor to major, may introduce a new curve in the melody to imply some?thing new in each successive verse of poetry. In the latter, the accompaniment pattern may stay the same, but that is the extent of the constant material; all else--key, mode, melody, ornament--change freely to suit the words and their implications. One might imagine that as a young, less experienced composer he began with purely strophic songs and "graduated" to a more forward-looking style, but this is not at all the case. What is astounding is that Schubert used all four of these forms from his earliest compo?sitions to works written in the last weeks of his life.
In his choice of subjects, Schubert sur?prises us again. As his life progressed from youthful exuberance to maturity and fame, to grave illness and suffering, his appetite for diverse subjects, forms, and emotions remained firmly intact. Der Doppelganger, a shattering experience of painful, ghostly intensity and the beloved Shepherd on the Rock with its naive appreciation of spring's return, were both penned in October 1828, his last month on earth.
In attempting to articulate what makes Schubert's songs universally beloved for nearly two centuries, one must finally speak of that vague and intangible quality we might call "atmosphere." In example after example, Schubert is able to capture the whole of the poem in a minimum of mea?sures. Taking examples from tonight's pro?gram, not only do we hear the river {Aufder Donau), we also immediately sense the fore?boding in the poet's heart; we see the stars and their radiance {Die Sterne), and we
experience their constancy and the comfort afforded us by the end of a single strophe; in only one bar (Nachtstiick), we know the immense significance of this particular evening in an old and sick man's life. This composer's ability to arrest us, touch us, charm us, illumine our feelings is always in place, and all of this in the most modest and briefest of all musical genres: the Song.
I
Tonight's program includes only two songs that might be called familiar. Tonight's song selections are grouped by poet and are gems known mainly to song aficionados. Remarkably, no purely strophic songs are present, but all other forms and traits men?tioned above are to be found and appreciat?ed in this mixed bouquet of lieder.
Der Strom is one of only eighteen songs on anonymous texts. This presents a won?derful example of Schubert's ability to create the scene in the accompaniment, thus the metaphor of the river as Life comes alive immediately. This song remained unknown until Brahms found it and had it published fifty years after Schubert's death.
We hear two sets of Mayrhofer songs tonight, a mere six songs of the forty-seven Schubert composed to his friend's words. These are all veiled experiences in one way or another; they present either a nocturnal or world-weary view of things. Poor Mayrhofer was an extremely liberal philoso?pher by nature, but was obliged to earn his living as a censor for the government. Greatly moved by Schubert's death, Mayrhofer tried suicide; he succeeded with his third attempt.
The first trio of songs from Schubert's twenty-first year already show incredible mastery of atmosphere and manipulation of form. Not one of them ends as we expect. Auflosung, which closes the second set of Mayrhofer, written five years later, is without parallel in Schubert, and even in composers
decades later. One can hear the seeds of Wagner being planted in this stirring piece. Not only is Viola in ballad form--it is indeed called a "Flower Ballade" by Schubert himself. A dozen very diverse sections are linked together in this long song, with the snowdrop's bell-like motive opening and closing the work and popping up twice in between, to guide our steps through this rhapsody. Schober was the closest of friends to Schubert, but his words would probably not be remembered without Schubert's music to immortalize them. If nothing else, we must be grateful to Schober for furnish?ing the text for the beloved An die Musik.
II
Following intermission we have a pair of romantic groups of songs. In Widerschein we can appreciate Schubert's set design as
the stillness of Tom on the bridge contrasts with the beloved's reflection in the water. In the song's third section, these two are magi?cally combined.
Alinde is as fine an example of how Schubert used modified strophic form as any of his 600 songs. The subtlest of changes, including unexpected harmonies each time the name "Alinde" is uttered, make each verse new and fresh.
It is not Goethe the worldly philoso?pher whom we encounter tonight; rather it is the esteemed poet as childlike--a smiling, even flirtatious lover who has provided Schubert with these words. The heated and confidential atmosphere of Geheimes is detected immediately with the muted two-note figure of this accompaniment. The well-known Rastlose Liebe sounds precisely as an impassioned lover might feel in the face of nature's obstacles. Finally, Versunken is perhaps Schubert's most erotic song, dan?gerously suggestive for 1821. Goethe, whose writing could be considered a significant catalyst for the development of the Lied altogether, vehemently disapproved of all Schubert's settings of his texts. The compos?er's many humble and respectful requests for approval or even advice were never favored with a single reply from the poet.
The pair of Leitner songs is from Schubert's last year (1828) and both describe a serenity which only nature can provide in special circumstances. Both of these through-composed songs show us that stillness can be captured with no motion or indeed with much motion, if it is constant enough. Die Cotter Griechenlands, a much earlier piece, is only one of sixteen verses from Schiller's ode. This valedictory farewell is directed not only to Greece but also to the whole world of Romanticism. Schubert has chosen to keep things simple, using only harmonic manipulation for maintaining our interest.
Program notes by Martin Katz.
I
an Bostridge was a post-doctoral fellow in History at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, before embarking on a full-time career as a singer. His international recital career includes the world's major concert halls and the Edinburgh, Munich, Vienna, Aldeburgh and Schubertiade Festivals. In 1999 he pre?miered a song-cycle written for him by Hans Werner Henze.
Bostridge made his operatic debut in 1994 as Lysander in Britten's Midsummer Night's Dream with Opera Australia at the Edinburgh Festival. In 1997, he sang Quint in Deborah Warner's award-winning pro?duction of Britten's Turn of the Screw for the Royal Opera. He sang Janacek's Diary of One Who Vanished in a new translation by Seamus Heaney, staged by Deborah Warner in London, Paris, Munich, Amsterdam and New York. This season he will sing Tom Rakewell in Munich and Peter Quint in London.
His recordings include Schubert's Die Schone Miillerin with Graham Johnson (Gramophone Award, 1996); Tom Rakewell with Sir John Eliot Gardiner (Grammy Award, 1999); and Belmonte (William Christie). Under his exclusive contract with EMI Classics, he has recorded, among oth?ers, Schubert Lieder and Schumann Lieder (Gramophone Award, 1998), English song and Henze lieder with Julius Drake, Schubert with Leif Ove Andsnes and, for EMIVirgin, Bach cantatas with Fabio Biondi.
In 1997 he filmed Winterreise with David Alden for Channel Four TV and in 1999 filmed Britten's Serenade for the BBC. His book, Witchcraft and its Transformations 1650-1750, was published by Oxford University Press in 1997.
His concert engagements include the Berlin Philharmonic, Vienna Philharmonic, Chicago Symphony, and the Orchestra of
the Metropolitan Opera under Sir Simon Rattle, Sir Colin Davis, Daniel Barenboim, James Levine and Antonio Pappano.
In 2001 he was elected an honorary fellow of Corpus Christi College, Oxford.
This afternoon's recital marks Ian Bostridge's UMS debut.
@@@@T
he London-born pianist Julius Drake works with many of the world's leading vocal and instru?mental artists, both in recital throughout Europe and America, and on record.
He has partnered in vocal recitals with Victoria de los Angeles, Sir Thomas Allen, Olaf Bar, Barbara Bonney, Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, Dame Felicity Lott, Wolfgang Holzmair and Edith Mathis. Instrumental recitals have been given at international chamber music festivals such as Kuhmo in Finland and Saintes in France that have lead to collaborations with Christian Altenburger, Natalie Clein, Robert Cohen, and the Ygdrassil Quartet.
Mr. Drake's award-winning recordings (including the Gramophone Award in 1999)
with Ian Bostridge on EMI include Schumann Lieder, two volumes of Schubert Lieder, Henze's Songs from the Arabian, The English Songbook, and most recently the Britten Canticles with both Ian Bostridge and David Daniels.
In 2000, lulius Drake was appointed Artistic Director of the Perth International Chamber Music Festival in Australia. This season and in the coming seasons his com?mitments include a performance of Die Schone Miillerin at Tanglewood with Mathias Goerne, tours of Japan and the US with Ian Bostridge, piano trio concerts in Spain with Massimo Quarta and Robert Cohen, recitals in the US with Gerald Finley, duet recitals with Angelika Kirchschlager and Simon Keenlyside, and a major Brahms Song Series at the Concertgebouw in
Amsterdam with Michael Schade, Dorothea Roschmann, Thomas Quasthoff, Angelika Kirchschlager, Gerald Finley and Ian Bostridge.
This afternoon's recital marks Julius Drake's UMS debut.
"Simply committed to the best in dance for Michigan.
UMS
and
Pfizer
present
Lyon Opera Ballet
Yorgos Loukos, Director General Manager Thierry Leonardi Ballet Masters
Jocelyne Mocogni Gerald Joubert
Company Pierre Advokatoff
Sandra Asensi Andrew Boddington Flora Bourderon Davy Brun Benoit Causse Mai'te Cebrian Abad Marie-Gaelle Communal Miquel De Jong Meredith Dincolo Andonis Foniadakis Amandine Francois Omar Gordon Ksenia Kastalskaia Caelyn Jean Knight
Misha Kostrzewski Olivier Nobis-Peron Jere Nurminen Jeremie Perroud Marketa Plzakova Michael Pomero Mikael Pulcini Susana Riazuelo Annabelle Salmon Elena Surace Julie Tardy Pavel Trush Adrian Van Winkelhof Thierry Vezies
Program
Friday Evening, April 19, 2002 at 8:00 Saturday Evening, April 20, 2002 at 8:00 Sunday Afternoon, April 21, 2002 at 3:00
Power Center, Ann Arbor, Michigan
Cendritlon
(Cinderella)
Sixty-second,
Sixty-third and
Sixty-fourth
Performances
of the 123rd Season
Eleventh Annual Dance Series
The Saturday evening performance of Lyon Opera Ballet is sponsored by Pfizer Global Research and Development, Ann Arbor Laboratories.
Special thanks to Dr. David Canter of Pfizer Global Research and Development for his generous support of the University Musical Society.
Presented with support from the National Endowment for the Arts. Additional support provided by media sponsor Metro Times.
Special thanks to Kate Remen-Wait for leading Friday evening's Pre-concert Educational Presentation (PREP).
Lyon Opera Ballet appears by arrangement with IMG Artists, New York, NY.
The photographing or sound recording of this concert or possession of any device for such photographing or sound recording is prohibited.
Large print programs are available upon request.
CendriUon
Choreography Music
Decor Costumes Masks-Lighting
Maguy Marin
Sergei Prokofiev, Cendrillon
Additional musical sequences by Jean Schwartz
Montserrat Casanova Montserrat Casanova Monique Luyton John Spradbery
Cendrillon was premiered by the Lyon Opera Ballet at the Lyon Opera House on November 29, 1985.
C
endrillon, which received its world premiere at the Opera of Lyon in 1985, was first seen in the US in 1987 when the Lyon Opera Ballet made its American debut at City Center in New York City. The ballet, which presents a radical retelling of the classic fairy tale, is set in a dollhouse and performed by dancers whose bodies are disguised to resemble dolls and whose faces are hidden behind doll-like masks. It is a world seen through the innocent eyes and incandescent imagination of a child. Marin's stunning and magical transformation of the ballet into an undefined time in the future, or per?haps past, universalizes the underlying themes of cruelty, sibling rivalry, jealousy, romantic and familial love and compassion, giving them new wit and an enduring sense of timelessness.
Prokofiev began composing Cinderella in 1940 but the war intervened. Later the ballet was put aside in the interests of his opera, War and Peace. He did not take it up again until 1943, during a six-month sojourn in the Uurals in the company of the Kirov artists who had been evacuated from Leningrad. Completed in 1944, the work was first performed in 1945 at the Bolshoi in Moscow. Cinderella is an entire evening ballet-spectacle in the fashion of Romeo and Juliette.
At the heart of the extravaganza lie Prokofiev's original and unique contribu?tions. The fairies' four seasons sequences are musically very individualized: indestructible spring, the hot fullness of summer, the thorny aggressiveness of autumn and the rhythmic balance and melodic undulation of winter.
The composer also sought simplicity and clarity to render the ballet accessible to the broadest possible appeal. The music responds, at its highest level, to the needs of dance in the manner of Tchaikovsky's ballets.
Y
orgos Loukos was an architecture student at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris when he decided to take his first dance class. His teachers were Boris Kniasef and Raymond Franchetti. A year later he was offered his first contract by Roland Petit, in Paris' Casino de Paris, where he stayed for two years. Soon later he joined Theatre du Silence in Paris, where he danced the neo?classical and modern repertoire, then danced the classical repertoire with the Zurich Opera Ballet for one year.
In 1984 he joined the Lyon Opera Ballet as Associate Director, and was appointed Co-Director with Francoise Adret in 1988. Loukos became Artistic Director of the com?pany in 1990 upon Mme. Adret's retirement.
Since then he has been responsible for inviting many choreographers including to work with the company, and for commis?sioning new dances from Lucinda Childs, Ralph Lemon and Karol Armitage as part of Dancing Zappa, which was premiered at the 1990 Lyon Biennale de la Danse. In December of that year the Lyon Opera Ballet presented the world premiere of Angelin Preljocaj's Romeo et Juliette.
In addition to his work with the Lyon Opera Ballet, Loukos has been Artistic Director of the International Dance Festival in Cannes since 1992, and he served as Artistic Director of the France Moves Festival of New York in April 2001. Mr. Loukos was named Chevalier in the National Order of Arts and Letters by the French Ministry of Culture in 1994.
C
reated in 1969 by Lyon Opera Director Louis Erlo, the present Lyon Opera Ballet (LOB) was established in 1984 when Mr. Erlo invited Francoise Adret to create a new ballet company committed to contem?porary choreographers. When Ms. Adret retired in December 1991, Yorgos Loukos, who had been the company's Associate
Artistic Director since 1984, was appointed Artistic Director and Maguy Marin was appointed Resident Choreographer, a posi?tion which she held from 1992 to 1994.
In 1987, the company made its US debut with a two-week season at City Center in New York, where it presented Maguy Marin's Cendrillon, which became an instant success. France's most well-traveled ballet troupe, the company has subsequently made eleven cross-country tours of the US.
Committed to showcasing contempo?rary choreography, Lyon Opera Ballet has, to date, acquired and commissioned ballets by a wide range of international dance mak?ers including William Forsythe, Jiri Kylian, Mats Ek, Christopher Bruce, Ohad Naharin, and Angelin Preljocaj. The company's reper?toire features works by many American choreographers as well, including Trisha Brown, Ralph Lemon, Susan Marshall, and Bill T. Jones, who served as resident choreo?grapher of LOB from 1994-1997.
In 1995, the Lyon Opera Ballet was named Opera National de Lyon, elevating the Lyon company to the same level as the 328-year-old Opera National de Paris, the only other national opera house in France.
This weekend's performances mark Lyon Opera Ballet's third, fourth, and fifth appear?ances under VMS auspices. The Company made their UMS debut in October 1999.
Chilean by birth, Montserrat Casanova studied architecture and urbanism at the University of Chile before going to France. In Paris, she continued her architectural studies but soon turned towards the beaux-arts and discovered costume design. By 1982, she had become assistant costume designer at the National Theater of the Montpellier Opera (Theatre national de l'Opera de Montpellier) for the creation of Insaisies by Dominique Bagouet. A year later, she launched into the costume design
of Jaleo, with choreography by Maguy Marin for the Groupe de recherche de choreographic de l'Opera de Paris and they have worked together ever since.
Maguy Marin was born in Toulouse, the daughter of Spanish immigrants. She began her dance studies at the age of eight at the Toulouse Conservatory. At sixteen, after winning the Conservatory's highest honor, she studied in Paris for a year with the balle?rina Nina Vyroubova.
In 1981, the French government appointed Ms. Marin resident choreographer at le Centre Choregraphique National in Creteil, a suburb of Paris. That same year she created her signature piece May B., inspired by Samuel Beckett, which was sub?sequently performed over 400 times both in France and abroad. The following years brought the premiere of the evening-length Babel Babel, a season at the Theatre des Champs Elysees, and her company's US debut at the 1983 American Dance Festival. In 1986, she was named Officer in the National Order of Arts and Letters.
Ms. Marin's work was most recently seen in the US as part of France Moves, the New York City-wide festival celebrating the dramat?ic diversity of contemporary French dance.
Lyon Opera Ballet Staff
Edward Boagni, Pianist
Elcni Loukou, Anastasie Dao, Tour Managers
Caroline Villcdicu, Secretary
R. Allan Ross (Parallel Production Services, Toronto),
Technical Coordinator Cyril Bcnhaim, Stage Manager Boucif Hamdaoui, Eric Chatelon, Lights Xavier Boyer, France Breuil, Sound Christophe Reboul, Marc Lanzctti, Stagcrnen Valerie Spery, Wardrobe Gerard Amsellem, Photographer
Raymond Barrc, President Alain Ourel, Director
Lyon Opera Ballet is sponsored by the City of Lyon, the Department of the Rhone, the Region of Rhone-Alpes and the French Ministry of Culture.
The 2002 North American tour of Lyon Opera Ballet is supported by the AFAA (Association Franchise d'Action Artistique, Ministry of Cultural Affairs).
Additional support provided by the Cultural Services of the French Embassy and the Harkncss Foundation for Dance.